apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

My old apartment in Cleveland needed work done twice - it was a very old building and there were questions about structure ... our landlord put us up in a motel down the street both times. i guess we were lucky that he offered without any hestitation.

During the mold removal and subsequent ripping out of walls and most of the bathroom in my last place, my landlord refunded the rent for the days we were out and paid for us to stay at a local motel. Though he didn't provide extra money to compensate for not having a kitchen.

I had a major water leak from the upstairs apartment last year which resulted in soggy carpets throughtout the apartment...

...the landlord offered me to move into a hotel, but I didn't want to leave my things with the doors open and workmen coming in and out - but I did get new carpets in the bedrooms and took the opportuinity to rip up the carpet throughtout the living room, hallway and kitchen to the bare concrete and repaint the entire place myself - best thing I ever did!

thank you so much for posting this! i was on the lookout for this document but didn't have any success. the housing dept came by our units last week and suddenly the landlords wanted to fix things up, 2 days before the appointment they knocked on my door asking if they could look around to fix things before the inspection, one being paint that same day and not really painting just touch-ups too on 9 yr old paint - what??? they are so clueless.
come inspection time they followed the inspector through my apt telling him things they were already going to fix (shitty paint job, cabinets not attached correctly, etc). i wanted this document just in case they actually decided to "fix" the place up. not surprisingly, now that inspection is over they haven't contacted me about anything. i'm always amazed when landlords don't even want to do basic fix-ups to keep the place looking nice.

I thought that under those circumstances the landlord is required to put you up in adequate lodging. If your neighbor is wondering where she/he should stay, then the landlord or leasing office should pay up. If not, I would consider your friend find a new place to live or talk to thier lawyer.

This is one of the (many!) reasons my girlfriend and I have been putting off contacting our landlord about the sagging wall in our bathroom; I'm worried it may require a major fix, rendering us bathroom-less and don't trust the horrible company that owns our building to do right by us during that time. We're just hoping things hold themselves together until we can (hopefully) move out this summer. They've been gut-renovating all of the apartments when tenants from the previous owner move out, so it's not like we're gonna be leaving them with some major project they wont already be dealing with.

Also, this is in NYC, so I am not quite sure what landlords here are required to do in such instances, but based on all past experiences with ours, I wouldn't expect much, even if law does require it...